Four and a Half Steps to Victory

“I happen to be a proponent of a single payer universal health care program. I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its Gross National Product on health care cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. And that’s what Jim is talking about when he says everybody in, nobody out. A single payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. And that’s what I’d like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House.”
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Obama speaking to the Illinois AFL-CIO, June 30, 2003.
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How Democrat "health care reform" will destroy private health care coverage:
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Step 1: Require all Statesiders to buy insurance that meets Federal standards; prohibit insurance companies from denying coverage to customers with pre-existing conditions.
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Step 2: Put in place a fine for all Statesiders who refuse to purchase Federally approved insurance. Ensure that this fine will amount to less cost to healthy individuals than will the purchase of health care coverage. Healthy individuals will elect to pay the fine.
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Step 3: When healthy individuals become sick or injured, they will purchase health insurance from private providers, who must insure them despite their recently acquired pre-existing conditions. In this way, the insurance providers will necessarily operate at a perennial loss, as the only consumers of their product will be those who receive more from insurance claims than they pay in premiums.
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Step 3a: Add in a public insurance option, or expand eligibility for Medicare / Medicaid. Enact a fine for businesses who do not provide insurance for their employees, but insure this fine is less than the cost of providing health care benefits. Employers will drop their coverage, and their employees will be funneled into the public health insurance programs, or will elect to pay the fine on non-participants from Step 2.
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Step 4: One by one, private insurers will declare bankruptcy and go out of business. The government will then completely take over the provision of (nominal) health care coverage. Healthy individuals will then be unable to opt out of the system, and either fees / taxes and borrowing will increase to pay for the increase in entitlements, or claims payouts will be reduced. Debt to GDP ratio and budget deficit growth and will accelerate, leading to even more rapid insolvency, or the actual availability of quality health care will become more scarce - except for those who can afford to fly to Costa Rica for private treatment.
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Result: The vast supermajority of citizens are beholden to and reliant on the government for their health care. Under the guise of reducing health care costs, Federal regulation of individual behavior vastly expands. Opposition to Federal single-payer health care - the new third rail of politics - becomes impossible due to the new, expanded sense of entitlement. The debate shifts from whether the Federal government has the wherewithal or the authority to so regulate and provide health care coverage to what is the most efficient and effective way to do so. Businesses and wealthy individuals continue to move out of the United States to avoid confiscatory taxation until unemployment reaches untenably high levels. The Federal Reserve continues to print bank notes until runaway inflation renders the dollar worth less than the medium on which it is printed.